Helen Zille’s new book, #STAYWOKE: GO BROKE Why South Africa won’t survive America’s culture wars (and what you can do about it), will be published in the last week of April.
The author describes her objective, in part, as ‘not to deride Wokeness (but) to understand it better because it is, in my view, the biggest threat we face to achieving the promise of our Constitution, based as it is on Enlightenment values’. It is ‘also an attempt to support the moderate liberal and social democratic centre, comprising all races in our country, to find their voice and make themselves heard. If we do not do so, loudly and fearlessly, we will become complicit in the failure of our democratic project. Although the odds are currently stacked against us, success is still possible’.
The following extract – the second of four to be published by the Daily Friend in the run-up to the launch – draws on the chapter, Delving Deeper into Wokeness.
The ideology underlying Wokeness — the politics of racial and cultural identity, mobilised to advance the economic and political interests of marginalised groups — has flourished in different ways in South Africa for centuries.
Our big challenge, after our first national democratic election of 1994, was to rise above these contests, in a quest for a common nationhood, symbolised by our first democratic president, Nelson Mandela.
This was always going to be a tenuous and vulnerable project, but for a few short years, we seemed to be making good progress.
The impact of America’s emerging embrace of identity politics could not have come at a worse time for South Africa, because it was a tacit admission that the famed American “melting pot” had failed.
It has made a reversion to racial and ethnic identity seem progressive, and perhaps unintentionally lent respectability to the politics of division, demonization, and delegitimisation worldwide.
In addition, in South Africa, it provides an ideological camouflage for crooks.
Its impact will linger long after the word has gone out of fashion.
Tracing the history of the word “Woke” in America, from when it was first used as slang for “being awake”, or “remaining alert”, was a fascinating exercise.
Ironically, its roots appear to stretch back to the Republican Party in the United States, when, over 160 years ago, the “Wide Awake” movement of young Republicans vociferously opposed slavery, promoted awareness of injustice, and supported Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Presidential campaign.
About a century ago, its re-emergence was attributed to the Jamaican philosopher-activist Marcus Garvey, who led the first widespread black nationalist movement in the United States. He used the term to awaken people to the reality of racial oppression.
In later years, it morphed into a multi-purpose term in black American culture, to describe the capacity to see through pretence, such as noticing the telltale signs that your girlfriend might be cheating on you.
As @Kwesi_win warned on Twitter: “if she’s acting ‘all good’, she might be cheating. Stay Woke”.
After Michael Brown, a black teenager, was shot and killed by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, #StayWoke became the call-to-arms of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, mobilising against systemic injustice.
Unlike the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, BLM’s battle is to dismantle dominant power structures, not seek access to them.
They reject the “cap-in-hand” struggles of the past for the accommodation of black people in the institutions of white domination.
Instead, the new Woke generation is determined to take on institutional America. Their main target is the police, whom they argue, “legitimise violence” in defence of a system developed over centuries to serve the interests of white, heterosexual, able-bodied, male Americans.
The shorthand for this “evil Empire” is “Whiteness”.
According to Wokeness, Whiteness has pushed all other identities to the margins of society — blacks, gays, women, people with disabilities, transsexuals, bisexuals, fat people, queer people, and any combination of these — to the point where many have suppressed their true identities, or are made to feel ashamed of them.
“Defund the Police” became the mantra of those seeking to tear down the defence of “Whiteness”.
Thus it was that the word “Woke”, cut loose from its original meaning, evolved into a one-word synopsis of the latest formulation of Leftist ideology — Identity Politics — rooted in Neo-Marxism and Post-Modernism.
It is the antithesis of Martin Luther King’s struggle for equality before the law and equal opportunity in a non-racial society, epitomised by the most famous line of his most famous speech: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character”.
Wokeness inverts King’s renowned liberal creed: Its dogma holds that biology defines identity and determines destiny.
Its academic label is “Critical Theory” and it has several branches, including Critical Race Theory, Postcolonial Theory, Queer Theory, and a range of academic disciplines collectively described as “Identity Studies” (by their proponents) or “Grievance Studies” (by their detractors).
Critical Theory is devoted to inverting society’s conventional hierarchy of privilege in order to promote marginalised identities.
Many people instinctively relate positively to that quest, which, at its best, symbolises empathy, and the desire to include everyone in mainstream society. That’s a worthy goal. We all need more of it.
So why has Wokeness become such a divisive force in society?
And why has it alienated, indeed actively persecuted, so many of its potential allies?
How has Wokeness, (which claims to champion inclusion), come to symbolise extreme intolerance, in its constant search for reasons to be offended by the slightest unintentional violation of its many speech codes and behavioural taboos?
How has a movement that claims to oppose bigotry, deployed as its weapon of choice, a modern form of the medieval witch-hunt, known as “cancel culture”, using social media to manufacture outrage against “offending” individuals and taking social ostracisation to pre-Enlightenment extremes?
How has Wokeness appropriated for itself the term “liberal”, even as it annihilates liberalism’s foundational value — freedom of thought and expression?
And how do people who consider themselves woke use terms like “Nazi” and “Fascist”, without any sense of irony, to describe those who disagree with them? Most youngsters who throw these words around have only ever lived in an open society, and have no idea what fascism is, nor ever met a real-life Nazi.
Indeed, the Woke movement now exemplifies the authoritarian regimentation that characterises fascism, as they tear down statues, deface paintings, and police other people’s minor “speech infringements” to enforce conformity.
Yet, they equate their struggle with the great social transitions of history, such as the abolition of slavery, and the suffragette movement to enfranchise women.
Of course, most youngsters who identify as woke are entirely unaware of the background, let alone the contradictions of the cause they espouse.
They either believe the word has a positive connotation, such as being perceptive and sensitive to the feelings of others, or they use the word ritualistically, as a self-validating label.
What started as a “sign-off” line has become a “pay-off” line, the marketing trademark of the socially conscious.
It is one of the great ironies of our time that communication technology, initially heralded for its capacity to build bridges in an interconnected world, has instead become history’s most powerful instrument of division.
Rather than promoting dialogue, the dominant online tribes cast those who express dissenting opinions into outer darkness. The result is the death of rational debate, and a massive setback for social progress, which since the dawn of language has evolved through divergent perspectives.